The linked pages below are my transcription from a transcription done around
1980 of the original St Nicholas Registers before they were handed in to CKS at Maidstone.
They may very well contain errors from both the original transcribers and myself,
so reference to microfilm of the originals is essential for confirmation of
all details.

I have tried to edit the transcript as little as possible. Spellings are
as found, except in some cases for dates, and except for ff which I have replaced
with F. The format is altered here and there for consistency, and I hope the
meaning does not suffer in consequence.

The original transcription would have been a considerable task, particularly as all
three sections are indexed by name. The introduction
follows:

'The Parish Registers

of

St Nicholas, Sandhurst, Kent

The most part of these Registers was transcribed by Sir Stephen Holmes. After
his death I completed his work. There are several gaps of some years in the
books held in the Parish. I have filled most of these from the Diocesan Transcripts
held at Canterbury. Unfortunately some of the sheets of these are missing.

The original registers were kept in a paper book which still exists. They
start in 1563. However there is a sheet at Canterbury which covers 1560-1561.
Part is undecipherable. The following sheet starts at Michaelmas 1563.

I have not found entries either in the Parish Books or in the Diocesan Transcripts
for the following periods

Parish Register Extracts 1560-1812: Listed by CJCLDS as on FHL British Film
1544553, Item 29.

Erratic
recording: Family
history researchers should bear in mind the high proportion of nonconformity
in the Weald, and particularly in Sandhurst. The earliest known N/C register
for Sandhurst dates from 1785 and the 140 or so years before this is most likely to suffer from seemingly
erratic vital events. However, the existence of Sandhurst Baptist Church registers
from 1785 does not entirely mend the situation, as entries in John Pinyon's
diaries suggest the Burial Register fails to record four events in the years
1827 - 1833. There is no reason to suppose that other
registers were at all times entirely consistent and flawless, and no doubt some
proportion of events in most registers were memorised or scribbled elsewhere
for future entry and then forgotten. Late baptisms and family roundups indicate
that a degree of casualness existed on the other side, and bear in mind that there was no legal
compulsion to register births or deaths
until 1874. Failure to find an event that should have been recorded in the vicinity
is a real and unfortunate possibility, and one that may not be able to be laid
to any particular cause.

I have included a set of charts showing raw mortality by year in Sandhurst
and Bodiam between approximately 1570 - 1700. The locality evidently
escaped the plague of 1665-6, but the generally close correspondence between
the two villages shows the influence of external factors. Bear in mind that
as Bodiam always was a small village, minor variations in death rates will show
up strongly; also that a statistician would have approached the data much more
carefully.